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Thursday, 7 May 2015

Well, I hate backtracking at this point, but I wasn't happy with my first attempt at the cover, so I had to redraw it. I'm happier now.

I thought I'd post a bit of the process for anyone interested. Here's the 'setup' I did in Maya to figure out how to frame the shot:

I posed out the 'DummyMan' figures on a simple plane and moved the camera around until I was happy with the composition. This is a really helpful tool for me as I'm compositionally/perspectively handicapped (read: lazy or unskilled).

Next I imported the image into Clip Studio Paint and drew my roughs over the models.

Once the roughs were in place, I went ahead and inked it in. I added the zombies in the back without roughs, just inking straight over the models. It was quicker. The zombies are mostly shadow, so I can fake a lot of things. I'm really liking this style I'm working out - lots of shadows means lots of silhouettes, which I'm good at. So here's the final result.

I have to admit that I'm not used to drawing with all this shadow. I'm an animator by trade, and have been trained to make characters using simple, solid shapes that are easy to animate. Dumping a load of black shadow over a character is sort of an animation no-no (unless it's anime, which looks crazy hard to animate.)

So now my big confession: my biggest influence here is Fancesco Francavilla (surprise!), who did some amazing work on the "Afterlife with Archie" zombie series. Check out http://archiehorror.com/ and you'll see what I'm taking about. His artwork inspired me to go ahead with Heroes Rising. His style is not slick or perfect, which I completely identify with. I like loose styles (but not so loose you can't tell where the characters are or what's going on.)

I've been working hard on my interior art. I have all 12 pages of my preview issue thumbnailed out. I'll be posting these soon.